


Another Grim Battle

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cooking, Domestic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:05:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: It’s not that Steve hates cooking. It’s that he’s no good at it.





	Another Grim Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Cooking for one another or cooking together.

It’s not that Steve hates cooking. It’s that he’s no good at it. **  
**

There’s a lot of him that gets shared with the world, that he’s ok with telling, but this, this streak of perfectionism that’s confined to the mundane, he keeps under wraps. It’s not that he wants to be perfect or that he thinks he should be; he doesn’t like doing something unless he knows he can do it right, is the thing, and preferably on the first try. Cooking just isn’t like that. Sure, there are recipes and step-by-step YouTube videos and blogs that use 1000 words to describe how to beat an egg but what’s frustrating is that following the instructions isn’t good enough. He can do each step precisely as outlined, ensure that what’s in his mixing bowl matches the images on the screen to a T, and what he pulls out of the oven an hour later can still taste like absolute crap. And he’ll have no idea why.

He can handle toast. He’s good at toast. When he’s in the big, shiny shared kitchen, Tony grumbling at the coffeemaker and Barton munching Cheetos on top of the fridge, that’s what he sticks to. Toast.

It’s only when he’s alone in his kitchen–-smaller by comparison but no less lush, stuffed with the latest and greatest gadgetry that Tony won’t let him give back–-that he’ll fire up his iPad thing or dig out the Betty Crocker and strap on his apron for another grim battle with the culinary world.

Chicken parmesan? Disaster. Manhattan clam chowder? Nauseating. Pot roast and baked potatoes? Palatable, but just barely.

There are some victories, though. Grilled cheese he gets down, once he figures out that slathering the bread in mayo is the secret. His pancakes are pretty decent. He can make an ok spaghetti sauce, simple, tomatoes and onion and garlic. It isn’t like Captain America is gonna starve. But that gap, that inexplicable divide, between what the recipe says will happen and what actually does is still a mystery, one that he has zero intention of sharing. He doesn’t have people over for dinner and frankly, he thinks his teammates prefer it that way. Sure, they gather now and then for a meal, but Tony has people for that. Tony has people for everything. Steve has serious doubts the man’s ever made a PB&J in his life, much less had to live off of them until payday like he and Buck did, way back when.

“We can always go to my mom’s house,” Bucky would say as they stared down the stale bread. “She’s dying to have us over.”

The thought of Mrs. Barnes’ chicken pot pie, her Jello casserole, was just this side of too much.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to write. Not because I don’t want to, but because once I finish a fic, I have a hard time getting going on the next thing and accepting that it may not be done for a while. Or may not go anywhere at all.
> 
> So, inspired by an artist I heard speak at a recent conference, I’m going to try this: pulling a random prompt from [this generator](http://bleep0bleep.tumblr.com/prompts) every morning and running with it for 25 minutes. That’s it. As the artist said, creativity is a muscle and these little guys will be my morning workout– a mimosa for my addled brain to get it up and going before I head into work– the results of which I’ll post here.
> 
> Some of these seeds may grow into full-grown fics. Some may be content to live as they are. We shall see.


End file.
